Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Further Venetian observations

Some miscellaneous observations on and from Venice:

·Persuading
people to give money for buildings was, as remains true, easier than persuading
people to donate funds for ongoing operations, missions, and maintenance. If
this had not been true, then Venice would have fewer grand churches and a
greater reputation for global missions. If this did not remain true, religious
people would build fewer expensive buildings and spend more on feeding the
spiritually and physically hungry. I suspect that part of the explanation is
people like to see what their money paid for. Another part of the explanation
is that for many people a building seems to be more of a lasting legacy than does
the satisfied hunger of some unknown person. Buildings can help to evoke a
sense of the sacred, but grand architecture and art alone are often
insufficient; they find hallowing in the prayers of people. Unlike great
churches and temples I have visited elsewhere, I have seen few people in the
churches pausing for prayer or meditation.

·Venice
is a polyglot city. Not surprisingly, menus, and many other things, are printed
in multiple languages that include Italian, various forms of English, French,
German, Russian, and Chinese. I’ve also heard Spanish, Japanese, and several
eastern European languages that I could not identify. Surprisingly, most of the
people in Venetian museums, churches, and businesses with whom I have dealt the
last few weeks, unlike their counterparts elsewhere in Italy with whom I have
dealt, showed little interest in attempting to communicate in Italian. They
were very happy to transact business in English, or whatever the customer’s
native language might be. Occasionally, I have observed employee and customer
explore several languages before finding one (usually English) in which both
could communicate. I’m uncertain about why communicating in Italian is not more
important to Venetians. Perhaps part of the explanation is that they have their
own dialect. Perhaps part of the explanation is that they know tourism is
Venice’s economic mainstay, they want to satisfy customer choices accurately,
and in the busy summer months need to deal with more customers. In some bars
and small restaurants frequented by as many Venetians as tourists, the
background music, played on an Italian radio station, is American. Perhaps
Venetians are simply riding the wave of homogenization set in motion by
globalization and the electronic age.

·A
sizable minority of tourists appear to spend more time filming Venice than
actually experiencing Venice. It’s a common to observe a tourist standing in a
water taxi, holding a tablet up, watching what the camera records rather than enjoying
Venice directly. (Incidentally, this is a bad bargain as water taxis are the
most expensive way to get around Venice). In those moments and for those
tourists, virtual experience has replaced actual experience, raising the question:
why travel? Excellent video footage of Venice is already available on the
internet, probably of better quality than unedited video recorded via tablet;
watching footage on the internet is easier and cheaper than traveling to
Venice. Many nominally religious people engage in similar behavior: they want
to experience the spiritual life without investing the considerable time and
energy that genuine spiritual journeying requires. Reading about others’
spiritual journeys and attending worship or other faith community events without
actively participating are two sets of activities that may resemble spiritual journeying
but that allow the person to maintain a distance and lack of real engagement. However,
for both the virtual tourist and nominally spiritual, tentative steps may prove
sufficiently alluring to persuade the tourist to set aside his/her tablet and
the spiritual neophyte to move from primarily observing to engaging the
community and its activities.

·Given
the popularity of masks, carnival, which precedes Ash Wednesday, presumably
figures prominently in Venetian life. Pretending to be someone else can be exhilarating
(a refreshing change), educational (learning to see life through a different
set of eyes), or escapist (fleeing from one’s own life). When and why do you
wear a mask (even if it is more figurative than literal?